OT: Public referrendums on destroying evil companies

[Cyrien]

Each person is indeed responsible for their own actions, as are the companies. Can they make sure that their software runs well and perfectly with every other piece of software out there? No.

Can and should they be held responsible for the quality of their own product running on its own? Yes.

Are they?
Why don't you check that Last EULA you agreed to on your software. It quite plainly says that they aren't.

Can a car manufacturer ensure that each of the hundreds of pieces that make up each car will work perfectly with any piece made by anyone else? No.

Can and should they be held responsible for the quality of their own product running on its own?
Yes.

Are they?
Yes.

Brief Exerpt from a EULA: Name of Company edited out.

4. Exceptions to Warranties; Disclaimers. Except for the above express limited warranty, blahblahblah disclaims any and all other warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for particular purpose. Blahblahblah does not warrant that the Software, its use, operation or your ability to use the Software will be uninterrupted or error-free or that all Software errors will be corrected . The warranty set forth above shall not apply to any defect or problems caused by any defect in any hardware or software used in combination with the Software, or use of the Software in execution environments not specified in the Documentation. Blahblahblah does not warrant that the Software or service will meet your requirements or that the operation of the Software will be uninterrupted or error free.

5. Limitations of Liability. In no event shall blahblahblah be liable for any damages to you or any other party whether arising out of contract or from tort including loss of data, profits or business or other special, incidental, exemplary or consequential damages, even if blahblahblah has been advised of the possibility of such loss or damages. Blahblahblah cumulative liability shall not exceed the license fee paid, if any, for use of this Software and Documentation. This section shall survive termination of this License.

Now the bold parts are intersting. So even if under the limited warranty you have damages that don't result from other software or a bad and unsupported OS and even if it was reported to them that hitting the F key five times in a row caused the software to format your harddrive even under those circumstances they aren't responsible. Even if they are responsible by some miracle of divine intervention then total damages payed by them to you shall not exceed the cost of said software.

So you lose 2 million dollars due to a fried server running software that the manufacturer knew before hand was faulty but did not inform you or do anything to correct it and it isn't their fault. So, that software company will probably go under now. Fat lot of good it does you and your now bankrupt butt that is penniless and jobless.

In fact the software people are probably still better off than you because they aren't responsible for you and hundreds of others losses and they could probably see their own collapse coming and prepared for it.

That sort of "Contract" is what I have a problem with.

Imagine signing a contract with a car dealer and in the contract it stated that even if the dealer knew that after ten miles distance it would explode and kill you he wasn't responsible.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by DavidG:
So what's with McDonalds making the list? Don't like it don't go there. I've been there about once in the Last couple years. Now if they were like MS and say used illegal business practices to ensure that I had to have a Bic Mac because every meal I ordered anywhere in the world had to be eaten with a Big Mac and the Big Mac cause me all kinds of problems then I'd be pissed.
McDonalds is easy no ignore or avoid. MS not so much.

I'm surprised you need to ask this. McDonalds is a multi-billion dollar international corporation. Do you think they could be so huge without being deeply involved in the same sleazy practices as the other corporate giants? Pay a visit to www.mcspotlight.org some time and you will learn something about how they obtain the cheap food that makes their business model possible, how they treat their workers, and how utterly amoral their management is.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Cyrien made sense.

[rextorres]

Cyrien:

Those types of license agreements - although menacing - aren't really binding they are just there to prevent the crackpots from filing frivolous lawsuit.

Typically it's not worth challenging these agreements anyway because one has to show damages and if WORD, for instance, crashes my machine it would be nearly impossible for me to show any real damages. What would be the loss? My intellectual property. How does one value that?

Also it may SEEM that it's easier to sue a car company. In reality, however, the cases that people usually refer to were huge class action lawsuit that took years to go through the courts and involved hundreds of documented deaths and millions of dollars in damages.

I think a more fair analogy would be something like this. I bought a lemon and it broke down and caused me to be late to work resulting in me being fired. It was the automobile company's fault for me being late but see what happens if I tried to sue for the lost wages. The best that I could hope for would be to get my money back for the car and MAYBE a free car wash for my troubles. Something similar to the standard license agreement you quoted.

With that said I guarantee you that if a corporation drops lots of money on a piece of software there will be an agreement that supercedes the standard license agreement and the software company will be liable if the software causes monetary damages to the purchaser.

[ October 25, 2003, 08:03: Message edited by: rextorres ]

[deccan]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
I'm surprised you need to ask this. McDonalds is a multi-billion dollar international corporation. Do you think they could be so huge without being deeply involved in the same sleazy practices as the other corporate giants?

This is an incredibly incendiary statement. So all big corporations are sleazy and immoral by default? Or is it the basic drive for profits itself that is immoral?

What are you asking for precisely? If McDonald's has broken any laws, then of course they should be punished for it. Perhaps you want to campaign for some additional laws to regulate companies like McDonalds. You are free to do so.

In the meantime, you are also free not to eat at MacDonalds and ask your friends and family members to do the same, in the same way that other people can decide for themselves whether or not McDonalds' practices are really horrible enough to make them boycott the firm's products. This is simply the court of public opinion.

Personally, I do eat at McDonalds from time to time, though not often, and it doesn't bother me the least.

[Cyrien]

Actually the legal status of EULAs is still a matter open to debate. Whether a specific clause is valid or not is upto the courts. So how things get applied is upto the Judge you get deciding the case. In the case of the software companies they can often afford to take it all the way to the extreme if they so decide. How far can the average person take it? And yes this does also apply to the automative industries and other large industries but at least in those cases they don't have the legal "contract" of the EULA binding you with those ridiculous claims. If you get a bad judge who ignores or doesn't know the law then you are likely to lose to the "Contract". Can you afford to take a bad ruling to the next level? The software companies can.

Here is a nice LINK to a case where the court was in favor of us the people for a specific clause in a EULA. That does not however overrule all of them and any recent EULAs will not have that clause in them anymore. However now they are trying a new tactic the tactic of

Exerpt from EULA:

6. General. This agreement shall be governed by the laws of X.

Where X is whatever country or state has the laws that would most favor them. How that will be handled has yet to be seen.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

actually, that 'governed by the laws of X' seems to refer to the place the company is at. still, your the one that'll pay airfare.